Phantom Thunder

Chapter 20

Kyle was lying spread eagle on the floor, catching his breath. I offered him my hand and conjured up enough strength to help pull him to his feet.

"Nice fight" he said, and he sounded genuinely sincere.

"Thanks" I smiled back.

We walked over to the board and reported the changes.

Thirteeth. I was now thirteenth. If I was able to muster the energy, I would've been as excited as Spark.

He walked over with me to get a drink. Blood was dripping off the end of my fingers and onto the floor. He eyed it with concern, and while I sat with my back pressed against the wall gulping down water he bandaged it up agin for me.

"Is he gonna challenge me again next week?" I asked Spark. My voice had barely enough volume for him to hear.

"I doubt it" he replied. "But I think Phoenix will. She knows she can beat you. Next Friday will be her perfect chance to snag the thirteenth spot she's been after for a while."

"You gotta make me good enough to beat her."

"Whoa there!" He finished bandaging up my fore arm. "First of all, you're already good enough to beat her. Second of all, you're so tired that your brain isn't even functioning right now, so no matter your logic, for the next little bit whatever I say is righter than you, and third, you gotta celebrate! Don't fall into the life of constantly fearing that your spot is going to be taken from you."

I wondered if he was talking about how he felt every challenger. Being at the top, people wanted to topple the kings and take their power. Naturally, a king would fall into the pattern of constantly fearing the loss of his power. But he had concretely claimed his spot. I was an invitation to be knocked down.

But of course my tired brain didn't process any of these thoughts. All it did was produce a dumb, girly giggle. "'Righter than you'?" I raised my eyebrows.

"Shut up" he laughed as he pulled me to my feet.

Thankfully I didn't get challenged before lunch, because even the bottom ranked students could've beaten me within seconds in the state I was in. I'd recovered a bit by the time the bell rang, and joined the rush to the great hall.

Over the piles of food, we joked and laughed. Everyone at our table congratulated me on the win, which left me feeling flattered and somehow light and bubbly inside, but that could've been my brain's way of trying to deal with the exhaustion.

After lunch, I stopped by Pluto's room.
"Anything new?" I asked.

He had eight different things open on his screen, and I counted twelve different tabs at the bottom before he interrupted my thought process by responding to my question.

"No clear answers" he sighed. "We're still trying to figure out what exactly is going on, but everyone's on high alert, in case all hell breaks loose."

"That's reassuring."

He laughed.

We talked for a bit, but he seamed distracted with his important things, and I was distracted with my unimportant things.

I went upstairs and had a long shower before changing into shorts and a hoodie and going back to the dorm.

Lilian was sitting cross legged on her bed and brushing her wet brown hair. She threw a pillow and me as I passed. "Come to the other boy's dorm."

I shrugged and obliged.

I'd only briefly been in one boys dorm, but the other one we went into looked exactly the same, except that it was crowded with a whole lot of people. Music was blasting, and somehow they'd found a whole lot of chairs. Yes, a bunch of teenagers were playing musical chairs.